


we don’t need another ruler, all of my friends are kings

by nachttour



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Binge Drinking, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Loneliness, Multi, Oviparous Trolls (Homestuck), Referenced Body Horror, actions with consequences, coming back from the void!, most everyone lives, parasites/grubs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2019-11-05 16:14:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: So Lizardlicks asked "So what if Eridan had been brooding when he got sawed in half." And I said 'Yeah.'_A fic exploring what it means to come back to a place that you were not invited and realize that you are missing something that you had thought was specifically yours.





	1. Part I - Orphan(er)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizardlicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/gifts).



“Eridan Ampora. Last of the Orphaners.”

You look at the troll sitting across from you. His partner and your other therapist is off today. She is a human and she had to go and see to her wigglers. They are called ‘children’. Instead of having a team working with you today, you have been given Hatori; who is watching you with his infuriatingly endless patience and scrutinizing eyes. You straighten in your chair, raising your chin a little higher.

In another world he would have walked Imperial halls as a peer, not acted as some sort of whore to the masses. Neither of you reside in that world, and that is part of the problem. At least there is a humidifier in their office. You are allowed to snack on the small fish darting around the tank in the corner as long as Delilah is not in the room. It is a gentlemen’s agreement between the pair of you.

The fact that you are sitting here, the fact that the other therapist is an alien, and the fact that you are alive are all impossible. Impossibility is a standard feature of your life.

“That’s my title. Unless you want to add Prince of Hope, or Lord Ampora. Both are appropriate if applied in the right context.” 

Both sit uncomfortably on you. They were things that you did not ask for but are expected to wear. One you wore better with long practice, the other you broke yourself to fit into, a mold too strange and esoteric to ever be comfortable. Still, like you have done with everything that is expected of you in life, you crammed and stuffed yourself into your role until your plates creaked and cracked and eventually so did you.

“If you are so interested in being that man, and in living that life why are you sitting with me?”

Hatori can be unfailingly calm but there are moments when he vacillates sharp and direct and that is the reason that you have stayed. Not just because he is a caste-peer. Nor because he is a troll and the initial idea of finding a pale prostitute in an alien was unheard of. Instead, the question that he has asked is the reason that you came to their office in the first place.

“I want...”

The words are thick in your throat like mud. In the background the tank bubbles. Your therapist waits, his fronds resting folded on his desk. It took a couple of tries to find the right person to chat with. The others that you tried to speak with were so fuckin’ informal. There was no sense of decorum. What wants discussing is of utmost importance and chatting with someone across you in some sort of soft lounge-chair did not make you feel at ease.

“I want to be around my wiggler. ‘N that man..ain’t the sort that has any business being anywhere near any sort of pupa.”

~ * ~

The last thing that you remember was the red-flash of Kanaya’s eyes. It had sort of been a pink, really, given the light of your wand. Then there was a fire-flash of pain. The last thing that flitted through your mind was a dull horror -- a clawing sense of terror for something profoundly out of your control.

Then there was nothing.

When there was something again you were looking at an alien and your moirail Feferi. Your favorite troll in the world, who broke her half of the promise that the two of you made when you were less than three sweeps old. You told her then that you would be at her side until the day that you died. She stopped expecting that fealty and it was a slap in the face that never stopped stinging. 

Beyond the ache of seeing her though, your mind registers something...off. She’s taller than you would have expected. The fuschia is starting to come into her irises and her skin is incrementally shading darker. She’s older than you. You are the same.

“I know... it is going to feel weird. But...don’t puff up or freak out, okay?” Feferi’s hands are up in front of her, useless and placating. It’s an ugly gesture and doesn’t befit someone of her station. An Heiress never placates someone who is not in her quadrants. An Heiress does exactly what she wants when she wants. Part of you hates it, and another part revels in it.

“Fef?” You keep your voice level, trying to understand and parse what has happened. The last thing you remember was a fight. It was awful. The rage that had filled you was something so white-hot there was nothing to do other than to act.

As typical -- it had been the wrong thing.

She watches you like a rogue naturae. Like you are something that is going to need to be managed. The anger flickers where it had simmered down into embers.

The alien at her side breaks the silence. It is not one of the ones that you had seen interacting with the others on the view-screens. There is a sort of resemblance -- but a fair lot of them look the same.

“You doing okay over there? I know that coming back from the void can kind of be a weird experience.”

That is a question. Something is niggling at the back of your mind unaddressed.

“I’m fine.” You draw yourself up taller. There is a pull to your middle that is different than before. It isn’t the tightness of plates reaching the end of their span and your body readying for a molt. You haven’t gained any weight- the idea is absurd with all of the hunting you had done before the meteor. Even with those things ruled out, something still feels...odd. Reaching down you press your fingers to your skin and feel raised scar tissue. Memories cascade through you and your fins flare up in fury. Every muscle in your back locks and you hear the roar of your bloodpusher screaming for revenge in your ears.

“WHERE IS SHE?!”

The human looks lost and blank, not unusual for its type. They are not a terribly intelligent lot. It is Fef you’re interrogating. She is a traitor and a liar, and the little bit of calm that had been with you upon waking leaves. If she’s here that means the jadeblooded broad who did this to you is here. The thrice-cursed wench who is going to die by your hands for hurting your good thing.

She sawed you in half and that was where you hid it. You find you aren’t even angry on your own behalf, really. Kanaya hurt your one special thing. The only thing in the whole fathoms-damned universe that was yours and yours alone.

Your wiggler.

The human pulls a rifle out of her modus in warning, her brows drawing down. Fef slaps a hand to her face, not scared but frustrated and disgusted. The sound of her growling adds fuel to the fire that is starting to consume you.

You see white.

*

The angels above you swirl like a living mosaic. It is like watching a school swarm, unaware of a hungry depth-whale below them. Not as common as sky-whales, but just as hungry, the things ascend toward the fake sky that is the water’s surface and encompass the whole of the school, the fish having been none-the-wiser.

Your gun sits in your hands, but the visceral pleasure of domination has long left you. They tried to whisper things to you, at first. Then they tried to fight you.

The most irritating thing that they give you now is their indifference.

Just like everything else that surrounds you. They owe you their fear and their respect.

Being ignored burns at the core of you like a fire slowly eating away all of your supporting structures— it makes you feel hollow. It is not the deference due a lord. Anger pushes up and through your thoughts, readying your hands for action.

You bring your gun to your shoulder, squaring up your next target in your sights.

The laser charges and expends with a familiar hum and hum. The light around you brightens to be blinding.,

*

Disoriented waking is starting to become a theme. You take a moment and try to orient yourself.

The room is low-lit. You are on some sort of a platform. It is cushioned therefore you are not in a cell. Flexing your claws, you take stock of the rest of your personage. Intact. No pain. That means either good painkillers or you didn’t get shot. Sitting up on your elbows brings another human into your field of vision. This one is vaguely similar to the one you saw with Fef, minus rumblespheres and hair that is standing up rather than curling like waves at its chin. You assume male. It is scrolling along on a palmhusk but pauses long enough to look up at you.

“Sup?”

Flaring your fins at him, you ease the rest of the way into a sitting position. Laying down in front of a stranger won’t do, on top of the rest of this clusterfuck. The alien does not seem impressed with you. Something about him rings the inside of you like a chime, resonant and familiar.

“So the thing about Princes-”

He’s a sgrub player, no, it would be sburb for the humans. A sburb player. That means that things went the way they were supposed to, after you died. The implication of it all staggers you.

“ - is that we’re real fuckin’ good at wrecking shit. I was kind of curious when Roxy called me. Guess she was hoping I would have your particular brand of fuckery on lock. Not sure I do.” He finally watches you in earnest, palmhusk tucked away into a pocket. The weight of his attention is heavy, like staring down a drone or an abyssal naturae much bigger than you and pa. 

“What I do know is that Hope players are dangerous and so are Princes. You are an unfortunate combination of both.”

“An’ what is it about this information that compelled you to comment?” The sneer in your voice is pure reflex. Never, ever, show fear. Particularly not to something that is larger than you or that is other from you.

You are afraid, though. He’s bigger than you, and your potential enemies are more numerous. Anyone you might’ve called a friend surely can be counted as pitch acquaintance at this point. No allies, outgunned, and the thing that you need to get to most is presumably with them... if she isn’t....

Nausea and anger war in equal strength inside of you and you ball your fists. The sharp points of your clawtips brush against the calluses on your hands from working the rigging of your hive and from the constant friction from your rifle. 

The alien watches you with a blank affect. “I am compelled to comment so you know that I know you. I know what you’re like.” He smiles slow and unpleasant. “Princes share traits.” Sliding free from the chair he’s settled into, the human stands. 

“Means that the only place you’ve got to go from here is up. If you’re interested in that. You also could stay a sad and angry piece of shit. It is always an option.” He smirks. “My name’s Dirk. What’s yours?”

“Eridan Ampora.” You are standing and a half a head shorter than this hornless freak. If he were a troll you would be fantasizing about what it would feel like to sink your claws into him and bite the smug expression off of his mouth. As it is you might be able to get in there and tear the smarmy fuck in half before he got properly ready to aggress. Discretion is the better part of valor, is what you ultimately decide. 

What a fuckin’ asshole.

Except that you know Dirk Strider.

More accurately, you know of him. Memory tilts and shifts in your pan like wavelets shivering along wet sand. This is the guy that Jake loved so much. Heiress’ tits you had to hear about him ad nauseum. He ditched Jake just like Fef ditched you. Only you got the sense it was different with the English kid - there was more to it than the forsworn lover had alluded to.

Focusing yourself into the present you find Dirk within arms-reach of you and with his head tilted in what appears to be concern. “Earth C to Ampora. You in there? You got a little glassy there for a sec.”

Part of you is still floating through the rolling hills of Jake’s planet. Another part of you is sitting in a closet with an arm wrapped over your pouch and hoping that you can find a way to stop feeling terrified and territorial all the time. Other memories flit and push at you, flashing through your consciousness like tiny fish in the broken light of the ocean. Lying on your quest bed, feeling power burn through your body like you are being immolated from the inside out, the screams of the angels of your world falling, always falling. There is so much that your head pounds with it.

“It’s fine.” You bite out the words and step back from the human. If someone touches you right now you are going to explode.

“Whatever you say.”

Pressing your back to the wall, you straighten out. Even more so now, you have to get yourself together and stand strong. “So what’s the plan? Am I to be publicly castigated for war crimes?”

Dirk snorts, an ugly and brief sound. “Fuck if I know dude. They just wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna go off like some sort of bomb. Hopesplossions aren’t nearly as exciting as they sound like.” 

Without anything to go on, your mind is racing directly to the worst thoughts possible. Only something else about the whole debacle pulls you up short. “I thought that Fef was dead.”

While you were thinking, Strider moved to lean a hip along the rest-platform you had been occupying. Given all of the fuss that he’s making about you being a threat he isn’t much acting like it. His attention has shifted back to his palmhusk. His phone. That’s what they were called. 

 

“Yup.”

Pressing your palms flat against the wall you try and get a sense of equilibrium. Sometimes you two... had talked in the bubbles. Not always. There were times when approaching her just meant that you were double-dead and then the trail of memory stopped short.

“But... she is not now?” If you were more certain, if you had the faintest idea of where you stood then your voice would not come out as a pinched whisper.

“Nope. We brought her back.” The sound of the human’s blunt claws tapping on his phone-screen is too loud in the small space of the room.

“Why did you bring me back?” The question rushes out of your mouth, too heavy to hold back.

Dirk’s eyes crest the horizon of his glasses. They are bright like the killing sun of your nonexistent homeworld. “We didn’t mean to.” 

Shrugging, he looks back to the screen as a message lights it up. “You good for now? I don’t get the sense that you’re going to try and rip the building apart.”

Numbly you nod, and track the sound of his footsteps as they recede down the hall. 

*

By the time that Rose steps into the room you are ready to fight. From the sight of the needles sticking pointedly out of her purse, she is too. That’s good, because all of the shame, all of the disorientation, and everything that you have suffered from the time that you’ve woken up is coalescing into anger.

“Lalonde.”

“Ampora.” She inclines her head slowly, and you hate that by her eyes alone she would be your caste-peer if you were home.

Curling your fingers tight into the padding on your rest platform, you bare your fangs. “Where is she?”

Rose pauses in the doorway, assessing you. From what your memory serves you, she was her group’s Seer. Nothing like Pyrope, but canny enough. “I’m afraid that you will have to be a bit more specific with me, Eridan. There are a great deal of persons that you might be asking after.”

You are on your feet and her needles are out and the sequence of those happenings is a blur. The corner of your eyes are stinging and the secondary membranes itch with it. You want to howl or scream and your pan can’t land on one impulse so it is a pastiche of all of them; leading to watering eyes and the crackling energy of imminent violence rocking through your body.

“Cut the carp.” The cadence of your pulse is too fast, your voice is strained from trying to temper your growl. “Where’s my wiggler?”

Rose’s needle is an abyss-cold point against the line of your throat. That doesn’t matter, your safety doesn’t matter. None of it matters. There is a hole inside of you and it aches. There is no cohort, no glory, nothing that you were promised. Even though you had not planned on it, just for a few perigees you had felt full. Full of purpose outside of yourself and the ideals of the state or anything else that you had thought was important.

Then they betrayed you.

Stepping into the pressure of the needles you stare into Rose’s eyes. The human is not snarling back at you, she’s not following the rules. If you are this angry, she should be too. It hurts so much and you want her to feel it too. Everyone should.

They should all suffer.

“She’s safe.”

Rose speaks to you as if the two of you were having a fucking picnic and she was discussing the weather. The hand holding the needle is steady. A detached part of you notes that it is the only steady thing in the world at this very moment: the strangely colored hand at your throat.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I did not think that you would.” Rose drops her needle, standing within reach of you and the bone-crushing strength of your hands. “You will hear what I have to say.”

Moving past you, the human takes a seat on your platform and glibly pats it, inviting you to sit like she would some sort of small lusus. The growl that escapes your throat does nothing to dissuade her. Undaunted, she goes on.

“It’s a miracle of sorts that she is safe. Had the angle of your demise been slightly different, had it been a week earlier, or a few weeks later then it would not have mattered that she had the cradle of your body to shelter in.”

Light glints off of her lacquered nails. It is a tiny detail, to notice the different shades of black and grey on them, with one nail brazenly hosting a shimmering miniature of Kanaya’s sign in jade paint. 

“A great deal transpired between her unveiling and where we have come to.”

Folding your hands over your middle you take a controlled breath. Rose is not going to give you what you want if you are simply aggressive, so discussion it will have to be.

”She wasn’t really ready to be outside of me.” Idly, you rub your knuckles together, listening to the soothing clink of your rings sounding against one-another. 

“You keep saying she -- but she was too little to have apparent secondary characteristics.”

“Was I wrong?” You weren’t and you know it, but the banter with her is pulling the knives of tension out of you. There is a clue in this human to where your grub went and that is all that matters.

Rose smiles, sharp and assessing. “You were not. I just find it curious. There is no documentation at all of troll reproduction outside of the Mother Grub.”

When you were four sweeps, Sollux scraped old feeds out of the dark-net regarding past policy on population and mixed them in with your coursework for administrivia and colony-function. It had been a jab at the inherent differences between you and your bodies accompanied with a rude note; but there was a gem in the mix that you had not put much thought to:

“In absence of a functional mothergrub, a subtype of the violet population within this chroma-range can brood a small grouping of wigglers to upkeep population until one of the mothers arrived or a matriorb could be procured for the site.”

Following that sentence there had been a chart with a chart of different hues. It had been one line in the midst of other more interesting historical and biological knowledge, and unsurprising in its modern absence from the feeds. At the time you had pricked a finger with your claw and compared your particular shade to the chart and figured that it wasn’t close enough to call a match.

Even if if had been, it was of middling concern. All of your mind was dedicated to Ascension-- the type of cruiser that you would eventually command, how you would make Fef proud. When you were being more honest, those fantasies also included how you might make her see that you were the right kind of flushed partner for her, that you had something to offer her empire an to her.

The tidbit had been as gross as Captor found it -- the idea of something inside of you growing like a tumor was repugnant. Finding much more interesting things to study, you had forgotten it entirely.

“You are rather unique, given the very abrupt lack of information we are suffering.” Rose’s attention is stifling. While she is just discussing basic facts, you don’t really want to think about brooding or slurry or anything else to do with it. There is a tiny siren somewhere on this world, maybe with lighting horns just like yours and she really is the only important thing.

“We didn’t think you could have live young.”

The comment throws you into the halls of the academy back on Alternia and to the feeds about biology and space. The building looms large in your mind, standing tall and straight against the starlit sky. Unlike all of the architecture on land built by wigglers, there was intent and thought put to its construction. The lines were clean and utilitarian, fusing seamlessly with the reef and outcropping bellow it. Entrances and exits were both functional and numerous.

From your debut into proto-society of the planet you were expected to visit at least once a perigee. Access to certain feeds and materials was restricted tightly enough that drone-drops or digital access were not allowed, but study could be accomplished at the tower. That meant hopping on your dad and heading out through the night to see to what had to be done. 

One of the many requirements had been biometric scans. Before the whole thing went nova, somewhere on Alternia a perfect copy of you had been saved to a grubtop. All of your genes mapped, all of your systems scanned and illuminated through medical imaging. The mediculler had patted your stomach in the most condescending way possible and sparkled along her cheeks at you, as if that would excuse the touch.

“Wasn’t necessary.”

“So why go to the trouble when you were about to play the game?”

Locking your back fangs, you click your ring and smallest fingers together, click-click click-click. “Where’s my grub?”

“She’s... not what you’re expecting, Eridan.”

“You don’t know me like that to call me by my hatchname.” Every time she says it, you can hear pity and sarcasm twinned through like medicine and poison delivered in the same shot.

Jutting a hand forward, Rose let it hang in the air. It’s one of the human things, a fist-bump or handshake or something of the like. Jake explained to you that it was something that humans used to do to show that they were not holding a weapon with the intent to attack. “My name is Rose Lalonde. Nice to meet you.”

“You are fucking ridiculous.”

“And your manners are poor for nobility if you do not at least make acquaintance when offered. Or are you too good to be polite for the sake of your goals?”

When you take her hand it is warm in the way that shitbloods---no. In the way that lowbloods are. Even if much of what you had learned when you were small was true on Alternia... it cannot be so here. Any scholar worth his merit is willing to examine further evidence when presented. Any tactician with a damn acts and adjusts to new information as soon as it becomes relevant. This alien is quadranted to a midblood, and has your wiggler.

“Lord Eridan Ampora, Final Orphaner of Her Most Benevolent Consideration.” Giving her the most subtle of bows, making sure that your head is level and your horns are not pointed toward her, you release her hand.

Hand. Phone. Fist-Bump. Brother. Sister. Lover.

Terms and language overlay your thoughts like a fog off of the coast. When you were with Sol the game had let you have everything. Code, the strange alien tongue or even the strange cadence of Beforun had all been equally clear and you left with all of that still intact. The language of the cosmos had flowed through your veins just as freely as blood does now. Or at least you think it might still?

The gesture seems to have made your intended impression. Shouldering her bag, she slips off of the platform and past you. “Come with me. The fastest way home is to use the platforms, since you can’t fly.”

Pacing her in the hallway, you try to find what it is that you want to ask and find yourself coming up with nothing at all. You’ve only seen your girl once. Most of the memories are sensation. Tiny knives along the inside of your thorax. Pressure on your pouch that was different and so much sharper. The euphoria of her hatching, and the painful and cramping sensation of her adjusting inside of you after working free of her casing.

Laying in a salt bath on the meteor you had worked up the courage to slide a claw along the lining of the thoracic pouch where she had made her home to see a mess of dark hair, tiny keratin protrusions of her horns and the button-glow of her black eyes, coupled with a maw of sharp, sharp grub teeth. She was the most horrifying and most beautiful thing you had ever seen. Then she balled up and all you could see were the sectioning of her squishy, healthy little body and her fins and tail.

Really, you weren’t supposed to be looking at her before her debut. That was a sentiment you certainly could share. From everything that you were aware of, after eating their casing and remaining safe in their host to get larger, brooded grubs would emerge and free-swim with their guardian as soon as they were capable of working free. 

She should have had companions. Statistically there were three to five to a clutch. That was just another way you had failed.

It just made her that much more important.

*

Their hive is colorful. That much you would expect from Maryam. The coast is close enough that there is a hint of salt to the air. Zapping in on the transportalizer, you straighten the cuffs on your jacket and make sure that everything is perfect. It would not do to have your descendant to see you in a state of disarray.

The sheer amount of things that you have to do for her is bothersome. You’ll have to have clothes commissioned with your sign, you are going to have to put together a listing of things from her homeworld that will serve her in the wider world. There is naval history, the history of the Empire, tactics, hand to hand when she’s old enough. You idly wonder if she’ll have any sort of aim. Maybe you can do a custom build for her when she’s big enough to deal with the recoil.

Just for a second your thoughts go to your dad and you push them away. You are functionally her lusus and that is a weird thought. Of all of the things swirling around like a maelstrom, the question that makes it out of you is, “do you have lusus here?”

Rose pauses at the entryway to the hive, pressing her hand flat to a keypad. It illuminates briefly, scanning along the outline of her fingers. “Mmm. No. We do have a functioning brooding cavern on this world. Lusus... are not needed in the same capacity as they were once.”

“A pity, that.”

Paintings and other art decorates the foyer and there is a small gate off to one side of the entryway. An indignant squeak pulls your attention to a plump little rust wiggler, its forefeet planted firmly against the mesh of the gate. It looks different than your girl and you lose yourself for a few moments in study of it. The horns that are forming look to be the typical broad pattern for the caste. Why it is in her home rather than in the caverns where it belongs is the next question.

Rose anticipates it. “That little one was having some issues with gravity. Once in a while it will get itself stuck on the ceiling and instead of floating down like a sane person, it decides to drop. Then again, it could be working on it’s ambush hunting techniques.”

Silently you hope that your girl isn’t mixed in with the chattel. She’s worth more than that.

“Mom?”

Rose looks toward the top of the stairs. “It’s your mother. Mom’s in the garden. I have company, if you would like to come down and say hello.”

“Kay!”

Following her line of sight up you take in the wiggler she’s summoned. Presumably she’s one of Lalonde and Maryam’s early endeavors. If they have a functional cavern, presumably they’ve had at least a few successful hatch-cycles by now.

She’s lanky, with strong shoulders and skinny legs. You wonder if she swims, because her build reminds you of what you look like before you hit your sub-adolescent molt. Her mouth is a rather obscene shade of black with purple sparkles winking in the light. That shade of lipstick doesn’t go well with her complexion but it does match Rose’s. If you didn’t know better you could almost swear you hear the growl of a chainsaw behind you. The color also reminds you of Kanaya and you have nothing to recommend what those memories bring.

It’s good to see that nobility still thrives on this disaster world. She’s a caste-peer. You can see it in the small fins that arch gracefully from a point near her jaw and back. There are decorative demi-fins fluffed along her neck and down the line of her spine that remind you a great deal of some of the reef-life you used to watch at night. When she is in the water you are sure they would look lovely. Tiny points of white show at the point of the lilac petals. No useless vestigial neck-gills which is good. You look at her horns and try and put a finger to what line she might descend out of. Nothing immediately sticks out.

“Nemone, this is Eridan. Eridan, this is my daughter Nemone.”

Inclining your head to the small child, you favor her with a brief smile. “Pleasure to meet you.”

The wiggler leans against the guardrail, attention elsewhere. Glancing in the direction that she has focused on reveals a purrbeast with a quartet of eyes lounging on a nearby surface.

Rose smiles, patient and even. “I think perhaps you might tell Gilliam that he is not allowed on that couch. Could you take him outside to visit Mom?”

“Yeah. Bye Eridan!” Brushing past you, Nemone goes to purrbeast hunting to mixed success; and you turn your full attention back to Rose. “Very nice Lalonde. You’ve managed to raise trolls without them all killing each other. Now. Where’s my girl?”

The expression on Rose’s face is hard to read because pity does not belong on aliens. 

“She just went outside with her cat.”

Something inside of you feels like it is tearing. Keeping your eyes fixed forward on the empty staircase you try to keep your voice even. “Don’t joke with me about this. If I have to I will tear your hive apart and then burn it down if it means I get to see her.”

Rose’s hand is on your arm and her fingers burn your skin like the spent casings of your antique weapons. “My wife would be highly upset with me if I let you burn down our home. That would also have the regretful result of me needing to kill you again.”

All of the willingness to fight, to pull free of her is leaking out of you like your blood leaked out onto the floor of the command center on the meteor. “How long has it been since I died?”

“Almost eight sweeps.”

Bright, tiny eyes looking up at you. Seeing her had been like greeting a tiny bit of the abyssal plane made animate, or a section of the sky pulled down and spun into the form of a troll. Beyond making it to the scratch and making sure she was safe, you had not made any plans. It was too strange, too mortifying to ever put your whole attention to. The process by which she had come to be is something that your mind will not fix on. Instead, you just let her happen, like a wonderful miracle.

Then you died.

You died and your wiggler did not.

Your wiggler has a name. One that you did not give her. She has grown up shaped by the woman that murdered you and her quadrantmate. Even more grievous an insult than that is that they raised her well.

You know the signs of a healthy troll, it was something drilled into you in feeds. It was expected that you would take stock of all of your rookie soldiers and staff as they ascended. To do that in an effective manner you had to know what to look for. She’s got good pigment, her horns were strong and straight with no cracks or flaking. Clear eyes, even temperament, stable in a new environment and confident around strangers.

Rose’s hand stays on your arm as you see the reason your life fell apart walk in the door.

Kanaya has grown taller than you remember her, and she looks at you from under the brim of a wide hat. Adrenaline surges through you and you reach for anything to find yourself reminded that they took your weapons. For all the trappings of civility, you can see her pupils narrow down to pinpricks and the orange tint of violence misting along her eyes.

“What is he doing here?”

At your side Rose is still like the leviathans that swam beneath you in the deep water, intractable and remote. She cannot understand how much you want to throw yourself at Kanaya, to see if she still has a chainsaw in her modus and if this time you could break it before it breaks you.

“He just woke up and wanted to ascertain the whereabouts of his grub. We had been reaching for some of the others in the void, but we snagged him instead.”

“You neatly avoided my question. Rose. I do not care why he is alive. Nor do I care what he wants. Why is he in our home?”

Instead of backing up like she should - like any sane being should when confronted with anger like yours - Rose slides her arm through yours and holds tight. She’s an anchor, you realize. Something still in the squall of fury that is howling inside of you and soon is going to spill out into the real world if Maryam gets any closer to you.

“Because he deserves to see Nemi, even if he doesn’t understand or really accept what that means. I think it is healthy for you both, don’t you?” Her tone is even and cool against the hot energy spiking through the air. How she can be so calm is beyond you - every nerve and and instinct in you is singing to fight.

Kanaya tilts her head down in frustration, her skin shimmering white and her horns pointed toward the pair of you. “You don’t understand-” Scrunching her eyes tight, Kanaya balls her fists at her sides, arms locked down and rigid to keep them away from her modus. “Get him out of our home, Rose. He’s not welcome here. If you insist on pursuing whatever it is that you have in mind I cannot promise I will stay civil.”

It is Nemone’s face peering uncertainty from down the hall that breaks the spell. Let it not be said that you cannot learn, nor that you are lacking in a profound understanding of when you are not welcome. Yanking free from Lalonde you turn and head out of the entryway of the hive. The light outside hits your face and you twitch, expecting the stinging pain of the Alternian sun. Instead warmth soaks into you even as your eyes adjust. Shoving your hands in your pockets you stalk down the streets of this new place.

*

You settle on a bench in a park nearby. That is the word that your memory serves you, though you know it as a communal lawn-ring. There’s a green-belt laid out to encircle a pond hosting a variety of weird looking naturae. They float on the surface of the water and quack and squeak at one-another. Once in a while there is dramatic tension as an individual flutters upright in a storm of wings. 

Nothing here looks like it should and yet there are elements that are inescapably familiar to the world that you knew before. Twilight has trolls out and strolling through the park or on their way to duties, presumably. There are no drop ships in the air nor drones. It’s the same enough to be jarring in its difference and then you see it.

One of your old prey comes to stand in front of you and the absurdity fits everything else that has happened since your waking. The angles of its face are sharp and its fangs are visible without lips to cover them. It is a vision of the things that always whispered to you on LOWAA, only miniature and green and lacking in the voluminous wings that your angels had. It stands casually with a skeletal hand resting over a walking stick, dressed in a well tailored suit.

“May I sit with you?”

“Ain’t a thing that I could do to stop you.”

It settles and leans the cane against the bench at its side. “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know that I would call it that. Would be better if it were a beach.” You flip a hand vaguely at the walking crowds, there are more aliens than trolls here -- some sort of carapace looking folk, the thing that has come to sit with you and humans all mixed up. It makes your skin crawl. “Too crowded for my taste besides.”

The alien turns and watches you. “My name is Calliope. What is yours?”

“ ‘S Eridan.”

It nods. She nods, is what you settle on. There is a lilting quality to its voice that suggests this being might be a female. The riot of information in the back of your mind confirms it and suggests another element: Muse.

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Eridan. Today seemed like a good day to take a walk. I’m glad I did, because I may have found a new friend.” Silence settles between you two and she seems content to let it lie. You never cared for it, and slowly rub your knuckles together, listening to your rings.

“I don’t think you have.”

She glances to you, tilting her head in curiosity. “Mmm?”

“I don’t think you’ve found a new friend.”

“I would ask that maybe you give me a chance before denying me outright.” Calliope does not seem to be concerned at your lack of interest.

“Just savin’ you a bit of trouble. I have had a bad run with friends and I’m not feeling companionable.”

Turning to face you, she pulls out a small sketchbook from a pocket and retrieves a pen. She begins to sketch out small figures. “There is always time to change the course of things. If one is interested, of course.” 

Dropping your head back and staring up into the warm velvet of the darkening sky, you shake your head. The soft scratch of pen on paper continues for a spell before Calliope speaks again . “In fact... I’ve found that we’re very constantly changing, all of us here.” She turns a page, regarding it a moment before continuing her sketching. “The unique thing about this place is that we choose who we can be and what we are. There are no labels.”

Her palmhusk is thrust into your field of vision and you stare at it like it might bite.

“May I have your tromblr or chittr? You don’t have to add me if you aren’t inclined. But... like I said, it’s a bit novel to have new friends.” She catches your eyes and you stare into the green of them, a bit lost. “Before now, I did not have many.”

You don’t have any of those things to give her but you write down your old handle just in case. Offering the device back, you indulge your curiosity. What do you have to lose? “Did you play the game?”

Her pen stills on the paper. “Yes love. I did.”

You swallow, trying to combat the dryness of your mouth. “Do you know who I am?”

She finishes her line and closes the book, offering a measured smile. “You are my new friend Eridan. Who...” she regards you with a careful scrutiny. “-who is looking for a new start.” Gathering her cane, she stands and prepares to depart.

“I would seek that, by the by, at the career center. You never know what kind of opportunities can be found when you look. I apologize for running off, but all of this is a bit much for me.” The broad gesture she makes encompasses the evening walkers, the naturae on the pond and the susurrus of traffic behind you on the street. She offers you one more smile. “I have your contact information. I’ll be in touch soon. Take care.”

Left alone with the waterfowl you consider her advice, and eventually rise to follow it.

*

It’s midnight by the time that you make your way to the career center. It is a tall building, lit from within and bustling with activity. Individuals haloed in light sit near large windows and a few evening birds swoop from sill to sill.

Citizens of every sort pass in and out, and the integrated nature of the place still boggles and disturbs you. To your left there is a goldblood with a phone in one hand and a levitating tablet in front of her. Sitting across from her and gesturing to one-another with their claws are two carapaces. No words are exchanged, but it seems a lively conversation nonetheless. Taking a moment to pay attention to the movement of their fingers you start to find words in the gestures only to remember that you do not care.

There is a line and the novelty of standing in it keeps you in it. Letting the sounds of the center wash over you like waves you zone out. What is it that you are going to do now? You don’t have finances, friends or a home. Really, when it comes right down to it, you are well and truly fucked.

A cursory glance shows individuals inserting cards into vending machines. Totals flash on the screen and change in response to the requests. That means that there is currency in play and you will have to acquire some. Motion at the periphery of your vision causes you to glance up. A soft human is gesturing you forward. “Come on up sir. Is this your first time here?”

The answer falls away from you. Turning and ignoring the clerk behind the desk, you walk slowly toward one of the large rooms off to the side of the intake desk. The clerk makes a confused and questioning sound that you ignore.

“Look, you’re gonna do fucking amazing if you just unclench long enough to let yourself do it.”

The youngish human leaning over a tablet watches Karkat like an oncoming vehicle. You can’t blame them. “I’m just worried. I never do well on tests.”

“That’s because you’re freaking yourself out over nothing. Just read the passage one more time and flag me if you have questions. One way or the other we’re getting you into university even if I have to bribe the intake staff myself.”

He’s gotten so big. Instead of getting more dense he got a little taller and shifted to fit his shoulders and the power that has always been in his voice. The human locks eyes with you and touches his elbow. “Um, Mr. Vantas? There’s someone that might be waiting for you.”

Karkat turns with an air of great imposition that you know is both genuine and completely a front and then his expression drops to one of utter incredulity. “Holy shit.”

Moments crawl by and you stay where you are, rooted to the spot and unable to press forward, uncertain of your welcome. He repeats himself and briefly looks at his student. “‘Scuse me a sec. I’ve gotta step out... but text me if you need help.”

Of all the things to notice, you see that he has a badge with his picture on it and his name in a variety of languages, printed in his color. It swings and bounces against his chest as he comes over to stand in front of you. Dragging your gaze up to his face, you can only hear static and force your attention to one thing in the world that you are familiar with. His eyes are filled in, and they look like gems.

“Eridan. What the fuck?” His hands are hovering at his sides, half-raised and stuck in mid-motion.

“I couldn’t tell you Kar. I genuinely cannot elucidate for you what the fuck.”

“Did you... how did you?” His mind is going a million miles an hour, like always. “This... is real, right? Did Roxy find you in the void?” Nodding, you find yourself approaching hysteria. It is too much, this day.

“I woke up with a human and Fef.” The way that his expression closes down punches you in the thorax all over again.

“It was fine. Then I talked to Dirk, and Rose, and Kanaya. It’s been a right fucking social day.” Even though you are trying so hard, your breath is tight in your throat.

“I met my descendant Kar. She’s has a cat. Then I met a skeleton in a park looking at the ducks.” The litany of your day is spilling out of you like blood out of a wound. “She told me I should come here because I need to get a job and something to do. I don’t have any money or a place to stay-”

Your face is against Karkat’s chest. The solidity of his arms slide around your waist and you can’t breathe. You gasp, trying to catch your breath after the longest waking of your life and find that it is not nearly as easy as it should be. People will be looking but you don’t care. Curling your claws into the knit of his shirt you rest your forehead against his sternum and try to stop yourself from screaming. His chin slots in between your horns and it is easier.

*

Karkat installs you on the couch in his home. Dave sits in the background, a leg slung over the arm of a chair and face-down in his phone. The human is doing you the courtesy of being present without actually engaging and you think that you might like him, despite the fact that he has taken Karkat from you.

If you had your way there would be no more witnesses to the disaster that is you at this moment, but life seems very insistent on letting you know that your feelings on the goings on around you are irrelevant. So you hold the iced tea that Karkat deposited in your hands and look at the art on the walls. One can learn a lot about a troll (or human) from what it is that they choose to surround themselves with.

Karkat and Dave have encased themselves in cohort and friends. The portraits on the walls are a far cry from formal, but show all of the human players. A cheerful carapace with the word ‘MAYOR’ beams up from a pile of cans. Dirk leans out against a railway in another image, face upturned toward the sea air and the gulls drifting by in the background. Some of the people that you played with are present as well. Kanaya sits with Rose facing away from the camera, watching you out of the corner of her eye. She’s dressed in white and there is a good deal of decoration behind them.

Small trinkets sit on the walls: delicately made robots, decorative sculptures made of animal bones preserved carefully with wire to hold them up lounge on the walls. Karkat’s novels have been left in piles near chairs, bookmarked and a few with marked pages. It is not a stretch to imagine him referring to passages to review them online. 

Dave provided you with what he flippantly referred to as ‘a burner phone’. It sits to the left, shimmering as it charges. It is still odd that most of your technology is only partially organic, if it is alive at all. Must mean that the native species are not as easy to adapt to wet-tech.

At some point a second human passes through on their way to the kitchen and you learn that her name is Jade, as Karkat slides an arm out and squeezes her. She pauses for a moment, watching you with the same intent scrutiny that all of the players have afforded you and her face melts into a smile.

“Hi! My boyfriends have no manners. My name is Jade. Are you going to be staying with us for a bit?”

The leap in logic makes you pause. Karkat answers before the silence can drag out too long. “No. Uh. Not directly with us. I’m thinking I’m going to set him up with an apartment at the Campbell complex. His name is Eridan. He’s a friend of mine.”

Just from watching them you can tell that Jade sees directly through his bullshit, but she humors him with a nod. “Good! I’ll be seeing you around then.”

Continuing on to the kitchen you are left alone with what you are cautiously deeming your only friend. Condensation slides slowly down the glass and wets your fingertips. “What’s the process for new citizens?”

“What?” Karkat says.

“You heard me. I’m askin’ what the process for new citizenship on your world is like. I’m lacking bona fides in terms of establishin’ identity and I’ve gotta get into the current of things.”

What you want to do is be dead again. You want to stalk to the beach and test the waves and throw yourself in and hide in the ever-dark of the abyssal places and leave all of this behind. Only that will take you to another form of oblivion and purgatory. Beneath all of the despair, beneath all of the stifling stress and grief, there is a tiny part of you that wants to throw all of the weight off and thrive.

It was the time in the bubbles that allowed you to come to the conception of it, and the ember of it is still simmering safe in your chest. No one else can save you from this. Not Kar, not Sol, not something as intangible as magic. You are going to have to do this on your own and it terrifies you. Bravery is always the first step. There is a reason that you were hatched nobility instead of a rank and file soldier.

For the first time in your life, you have genuinely impressed Karkat Vantas. A smile turns the corner of his mouth up into a smirk and he leans toward you against the backrest of his chair.

“You’re asking the right troll. I work in civic engagement.” He beams at you and pulls out a tablet, summoning forms to begin your registration processes.

*

The apartment is small, but you could care less about that. The veranda opens out toward the sea and in the evenings you can stand sentinel as the marine layer of fog rolls in. Really, it’s just one room connected to the vastness of the seas of Earth C. The water here is cleaner than it was at home, though there is a chemical tang of industrial waste near the wharfs. It pissed you off enough to fill out a form about it. Karkat promised that he would make sure it made it to discussion at the next council meeting.

Callie sits across from you on the couch, a larger sketchbook balanced on her knees. The sound of her pencils has become soothing the more it is around you. “How are you finding it here?”

Tracking the gulls hovering on the breeze and occasionally harassing beachgoers a few stories down, you take your time answering. “‘S a complicated question, that.”

“I know. That’s why I asked it.” Callie replies, serene.

“I’m... managing.” If it were still the game, if you were still on Alternia you would have lied to her. There is very little point in lying now.

“I’m glad that you managed to get to the career center. I had a good feeling about that.” The warmth in her voice is the reason that you let her into your space.

“Did you create all of this?” Gesturing to the building, and further out to the sea, you wait to see how she will reply. 

She peeks at you over the edge of the sketchbook. “In a way, yes. But not really so much?” Her eyes drop back to the paper. Minutes prior she had tucked the book onto her knees and refused to let you see what she was working on. You have half of a mind to expect that it’s porn.

“I’m registering my grievance about it. It’s a shitshow, all of it. And also my powers are stupid.” As far as you can tell, all you are good at is letting people down and destroying things.

“Oh silly. It’s not all bad. It’s really about how you use them. And anyway... in a way you created me.” She pauses in her drawing, regarding you in fondness that you do not feel you have earned. “If you hadn’t played, then my caretaker would not have been there when I hatched. So... in a way I have you to thank for my life.” She flutters her lashes at you and you snort.

“You know... though... Princes are kind of special.”

Scrolling through chittr you arch a brow at her. “Yeah?”

“Uniquely they have the ability to break through things that hold us back. They lead.” Folding her arms on her knees, she grins at you. “They can be gallant. Though I do wonder if that is just another word for really stubborn.”

She squeals as you throw a pillow at her, and go back to arguing with some idiot about ‘ancient’ Alternian naval tactics and comparative Beforun stellar plans.

*

“If you move again I’m going to jab you in the eye and then we’re both going to feel really bad.” Jade is perched in your lap, mascara wand in hand.

In the background, Dave is watching you two with the air of a legislascerator witnessing a scuttlebuggy crash. “Man why you let her do your makeup for you when I could have helped is still beyond me.”

Forcing yourself not to roll your eyes or shake your head at Strider-minor, you rest your hands lightly on Jade’s sides for lack of somewhere better to put them.

“Knowing you, you would choose the loudest shade or gold or some shit and make me look like an idiot. I’m going for avant-garde, not garish.” Really, how can one even expect that Dave would know all of the cultural and quadrant-associations denoted by colors worn on a person. Hardly his wheelhouse.

“Harsh.” Slapping a hand to his chest, Dave flops backward onto the couch as if wounded.

“At least one of us has to look elegant for shitfaced-Friday.” Jade’s tongue is carefully captured between her teeth as she concentrates on her line. “It sure as heck isn’t me or Karkat and I have my doubts about you, mister Strider. So it’s up to Eridan to pick up the slack.”

The aforementioned Karkat steps into the room and you wrinkle your nose. “You are NOT wearing those out.”

Looking down at the sweater and ugly jeans that he wears to work, he slowly looks back up at you. Dave rubs his face and chuckles. “I think you have seriously underestimated my man’s commitment to comfy. Those pants are like a second skin. They’ve carried him through battle, they cover at least sixty percent of his body-”

An appreciable amount of ramble is cut off as Karkat puts his hand directly over Dave’s mouth and leans down to plant a kiss on top of his head. “You aren’t funny and I’m wearing my comfortable jeans. I don’t want to have a seam halfway up my fucking nook to drink beer with my friends.”

Dave does something and Karkat wipes his hand on Dave’s cheek. It is a safe bet to assume he might have gotten licked.

Jade tilts your chin to adjust her working angle and grabs a hand mirror. “Inspect and render judgement.”

There is a hint of a metallic sheen to the liner that preceded the mascara. You look like someone that the Condescension would have had around her. “It’s perfect. Let’s go get shitfaced.”

She smooths the streak in your hair into a different position and chuckles. “I would say let’s go sweat it all off, but you don’t sweat. I’ll have to dance double as hard.”

Winking back at her, you pick her up and delight in the shrieking laugh that it gets.

“Why the fuck are you so strong? You’re shorter than I am.” She loops her arms around your shoulders, careful of the tie that you just finished smoothing into place.

“One of my few and precious virtues.” Giving the pair of you a twirl, you ease her down to her feet.

Karkat chuckles. “You think he’s tiny now, just wait for it. Remember my last molt? He’s behind us and has one of those to go. He may get even more huge and unnecessary with time.”

Dammit you had managed to forget about that. Your sub-adult molt was torture. Young adult is going to be even worse -- you’re going to get taller. You know it in your chitinous structures. That also answers the non-pressing question of why your neck and knees have been sore. Part of that answer could have been crushing galactic unfairness ever-pointed in your direction; but biology is a reasonable second guess.

Catching a ride to the bar is a matter of a press of a button on a phone and five minutes outside. Karkat looks contemplatively through tromblr, marking a few posts to respond to later. The transport pulls up and the four of you pile in — you and the humans in the back, Karkat riding in front. Dave is pressed along your side, scrolling through his phone and checking to see who the DJ for the evening is. From the many nights spent at their hive you know that he could do it better -- his pertinatural sense of timing is a spice in the sensuous mix of rhythm and sample.

Jade occupies the seat of honor at your other side -- acting as your goddess of mercy for keeping her window wide open. Part of you wants to bitch because the wind is throwing your hair around and hers is a wild snarl with tiny bits of light she’s witched into the dark spaces between curls. You are smarter than to argue with her. Much as you adore this trio, the three of them in a small space starts to make the air muggy and uncomfortable. It is like sitting inside of a small fire -- while it keeps you warm, it suffocates you just the same.

It is a quick trip and without much fanfare the lights of your favorite dive illuminate the panes of your glasses and cause motes of glitter to dance like a star-scape on Jade’s eyelids. She has chosen a complimentary shade to dust over yours, subtly marking you as part of their whole. It is a mercy that stings only a little bit.

Corrin, the regular indigo bouncer is working. He gives the three of you a nod and lets you pass without the usual formalities. A few people behind you grumble and you let their protests melt into the soundscape of the street. Corrin is fifteen feet tall and you trust him to take care of his own business. You slide into the press of patrons and let the noise wrap around you. Sometimes crowds feel like you are being pressed in a vice, but this time it’s easy. You’ve been out with Karkat’s clade more than once and it invariably is a good time.

Putting your ID on the bartop you catch the eye of your favorite bartender and wink at them. They pour you a double-shot of your favorite clear alcohol and you slam it back. The set playing inside has a lot of thump but none of the finesse of Dave’s music when he’s working serious and not fucking around.

Four or five more and nothing matters.That is the ideal if you can get them in. Personal best so far is nine, but there were consequences. The clink of the glass on the bar sounds like off-tempo chimes. 

Jade finds you on the floor and sometimes dances with you, in your orbit but not too close, making good on her promise to dance all of her makeup off. It’s a strange thing to be here like this. The kind of dancing that you learned when you were small was tailored to pair with Mirthful festivals or state functions. Sure, there was twerking, but it wasn’t as free or heated as this is. It also involved a significant more amount of blood.

Someone tall with good hands slides their hands around your waist and you flutter your fins. Little too early in the night. Not enough to drink. You slide away from your partner and to the bar. You don’t want to leave enough time for the flutter of fear hiding behind the excitement of a one night stand to catch you.

Whenever someone finds you and wants to pail it’s a balance of factors. Humans don’t always have enough sharp edges, they can’t get you there. Sometimes trolls scare you. Both situations end up with a walk of shame back to your apartment and a very purposeful loss of napkins and messages containing contact information.

You’re chasing something though. That sharp, indescribable feeling of a bulge settling so far into you that it aches, and of being so full that you feel a little sick. You’ve tried to recapture it, much to the consternation of your troll partners. Invariably your genebladder gives up the goods in a splatter of regret inside of your shower stall. It still feels a little perverse just to let it flow away, mixed in with water.

The times that you don’t like to think hard about see you crying. The cause is nothing you can wrap your mind around. You just freeze, either perched on top of a partner or pinned under them, the weight of them between your legs. No matter how artfully the bulge inside of you thrashes, the tears still slide down your face. You hate yourself for it.

Your bartender has your number and has already realized that you tip like you mean it. Three more shots slide down your throat in rapid succession. The idea of paying for something that you already paid for did not really appeal to you, but Dave talked you through the upside of the practice.

You appreciate it now. It means that you get to be fucked up quickly and everything stops being so immediate. Instead of worrying about your classes, or what you are going to be working on next at the job that you have to work until your certifications go through, you float a little outside of yourself and the horror lurking in the back of your pan.

It never goes far from you though. That might be the theme of your life. No matter how hard you run, how hard you fight, or how well you try and hide they arrive for you. It comes dressed in the faces of your fellow players and dashes behind your eyes as memories from your grubhood.

The problem of the moment is in the back half of the club, cocktail in hand and a pale leg jutting from a skirt with a darlingly high slit. Rose Lalonde watches you, and like a tiny fish drawn toward an angler, you go to her.

Settling into the seat across from her you lean in on your forearms so that you can hear her properly. The pulse and thump of the club is loud enough that talking is much better done outside on one of the patio-spaces. Neither of you wants to make that commitment. The club is a neutral, liminal space where secrets can be muttered and half-hidden in the music and flashing lights near the dance-floor.

“Nemone is curious about you.”

Flagging down a passing waitress you snag another shot, scanning your watch to have the cost deducted straight from you account. Future-you is not going to thank you for any of this, but you don’t care about him.

“You gave her a good name.” The long game with Lalonde, that is what you have to play.

“I thought of you, and there was some influence in her beautiful demi-fins. She was stunning as a grub.” Rose’s eyes soften and you can see the ghost of your wiggler in them. “It was like watching a living flower.”

Jealousy and regret war inside you, burning like bile in your throat. “‘Course she was. She has a very good lineage.”

“I find it curious that you have a sense of that at all — given the peculiarities of your species.” Rose sips her cocktail slowly, leaving a delicate lip-print on the wide rim of the glass. Squinting at it and the small cherries bobbing within it, you realize that she is drinking a shirley-temple. There is no black-light friendly stamp on her hand to allow easy access to the bar either.

Rose continues, oblivious of your careful observation of her. “We had a bit of a fright with her initially. We did not realize we would have to get a tank. We managed not to kill her and eventually she had the run of a very lavish aquatic setup.”

She raises her eyes to you. “There is a lot about her that we are not entirely sure about. It would be a great service to us, the future broods, and Nemone herself if we could sit down and discuss sea-dweller biology a bit more in-depth.”

“You have Fef-” You bite her name out and take a breath, reigning in the maelstrom that is sitting in the back of your mouth, brewing behind your fangs. “Feferi… ought to be able to answer your questions more’n me. Maybe better ‘cuz she had access to the imperial feed libraries. An’ she is a life-player.” 

“Certainly. But fuschia-bloods are a different thing. Kanaya has a hypothesis that they might actually be a different sub-type of troll within the species that rose to dominance due to their power-chaining and consolidating skills. Not all that we learn from Feferi applies to Nemone or any of our other violet children. Nor any of the off-spectrum aquatic grubs.”

There is so much to unpack there that you do not even bother to try it. All you can think of is how unfair it is. That was your girl. For precious moments on the meteor you had imagined what it would be like to have someone in your life that would not leave you. Who would understand you. Who would love you back and not stop.

Sure… the concept of having a descendant was perverse; but it had also been briefly stunning.

“Far as I could tell Lalonde—” Reaching out to place your empty shot-glass on the tray of a roving waiter you adjust your approach. “Rose. I am not a gambling troll. I see my shot. I line it up the way I want, and I take it. Getting up in your hive with your brood and your matesprit is asking for trouble. I’ve had my share and I don’t want to borrow any ‘till I’m done with this lot that I have already.”

Rose’s eyes drift into contemplative slits. “That is not what I was expecting from you. Don’t you want to see your grub?”

The sound of the table giving under the pressure of your fingers is what makes you lighten up. There is an indent in the metal. Shoving a cocktail napkin over the spot makes it like it never happened.

“She ain’t mine. She’s yours. Helped yourself to her outta my corpse.”

The venom leaks out into your words despite your best intentions. Long-games be damned, you hate the two of them. It might prove to be a transient hate that dissipates under the scrutiny of this world’s gentle sun, but in this moment it fills you to the brim like an interior ocean. Waves lap against your fangs and your fingertips, offering violence if only you would let it out.

She raises her glass to you, and finishes the contents, leaving the glistening cherry in the bottom. “Enjoy your evening, Eridan. You know how to get in contact if you wish.” It is a small mercy she allows you by leaving first. Her skirts swish around her ankles like the tendrils of a living blackness.

Texting the group to let them know that you have ‘found a friend’ you push and weave your way through the bodies on the floor. The night is young and potentially the message you have sent is not a lie; but you don’t want to drive back with them like this.

One of the servers from earlier is passing by again. You grab their elbow with one hand and a shot off of their tray with the other. Making up for the faux pas of putting hands on them, you jam a large bill into their pocket. The tip mollifies the anger that sparked at being touched, and they quickly slide away from you.

The fog machines spew out smoke onto the floor and that’s the last of this night you can stand. That carp irritates your gills terribly. It sticks, and you find wisps of almond-shit lingering on the back of your throat. Something is warring for your attention and you can’t put a finger on it. Not until a hand catches yours and most of the subtle unrest of the evening drops away.

The person in the corner of your eye is leaning against a barstool and has douche-glasses on. You and he both know that the reason this is so is that his eyes are red and vacant instead of the red and blue combo that they should be. Sliding effortlessly over you are tucked between the long line of Sollux Captor’s torso and the solid weight of the table in front of you.

Chirring like a newborn thing you close your eyes and lean back. He hates it here just as much as you do and you know why he’s come -- because Aradia is here somewhere. To your disappointment they will be gone again soon, because that is the way it is and that is the way that they are.

His chin slots over your shoulder and you can feel the broken-rattle of his purr against your neck. Reaching back you slot your fingers through his and squeeze -- tight enough to strain the tendons and lightly prick at the back of his hand. He nips the bottom tine of your fin sharp enough to draw blood and you press closer against him.

He rests his cheek against the side of your head and hums softly. “You stink like the bar.”

“Mm,” you reply amiably.

“Did you come with someone?” His hand wraps around your waist, holding you tight.

Both of you hate being in the middle of crowds -- there is no point in lying when he’s been in your head and you’ve been in his. “I did.”

“And when did you ditch them?” His voice is dry and mocking.

“‘’Bout five minutes ago.”

“Great job, bulgelord.”

“Thhhhhlord. Indeed.” Teasing him without a drop of heat in your voice you close your eyes and let the sounds of the club press against you. The tickle-itch of his power dances along the back of your neck and through your hair. He knows that you have fantasized about electricity pulsing through the filaments of your gills and the water around you. You know he’s thought about doing it. You don’t know if you want to fuck Sollux tonight, or if he would consent to do so.

He fits his hands into the pockets of your pants, the heat of his palms burning through the fabric sitting between them and your skin. The two of you rock together slowly to one of the slower beats, shifting in perfect synchronicity to the music. For a few precious seconds you forget that his hands are not your hands, and that there are barriers of keratin and flesh now drawn between you like organic lines.

Aradia is felt before you see her. There is the tickle of time passing against your skin, the soft click of gears in a box, audible even over the bass. She has three shot glasses because this evening she has deigned to be merciful.

Taking the glass offered to you without complaint you look into her bright eyes. The two of you are the same height, now.

“Here’s to our newest member of the ‘here in defiance of common sense and narrative causality club’ ”

The glasses clink as the three of you raise them and rum slides down your throat easy.

“Thanks for the kind welcome, Megido.” 

She shoots you the double-finger-guns and a wink combo and you cannot bring yourself to find it cheesy. This is the person that Sollux loves. A terrifying, depthless, ruthless someone with a will to live ten times stronger than yours ever will be.

“I’m going to steal Sollux. My song is coming up in a second.”

Wordlessly you slip forward out of the electric giant’s arms and past her. She catches you around the waist and you permit the incursion into your space. This is the time to find new friendships, to make amends, and to find new ways forward. Old habits howl that you should smack her across her mouth for touching you out of turn.

The ghosts of her wings flicker behind her, dropping motes of time or energy. You were never able to figure out which it was. Reaching forward you balance one on your fingertip, bringing it up to eye-level as it slowly winks out of existence.

“Our trollian handles are still the same. And Sollux is still on the computer more than he really needs to be, considering that we don’t technically exist. If you need him, leave a message. We’ll get it.” She grins suddenly, wide and full of fangs, her eyes like dark moons in the yellow skies of her sclera. “If you believe it strong enough you might be able to make it happen.”

The two of them retreat into the mix of the dancing throng. All of the alcohol from this evening and the up and down of unexpected meetings is starting to make your head and gastric-sac roll. It is more than time to take it outside for some fresh air. 


	2. Part Two - Auxiliatrix

_Sweeps in the Past, But not Many..._

~*~ 

Your name is Kanaya Maryam, once an aullitrix of Alternia and now the Sylph of Space. You have chainsawed a boy in half, for several reasons, the least of which is that he is a fuckwit. Generally this action has resulted in what consequences you might have expected. 

As the integrity of his plates has been compromised, his innards have splashed out in a wet, fleshy imitation of a bouquet. The fact that all of the blood on the floor makes your salivary glands run at double-time does not disturb you near as much as it ought to. His face was smashed to the ground, one of the lenses of his glasses shot through with a lacework of cracks. The fin closest to the floor was folded under his face, and given the delicate nature of the cartilage that held the segments, it is probably broken. None of this provokes sympathy. All you can feel is fury and adrenaline, shooting through your body and mind and making your fronds ache for further violence. 

When you lean down closer to inspect your kill (and surreptitiously run your finger through the blood-pool) you see it. 

Two shining dark eyes stare at you from behind a film of tissue. You see a tiny body orbit, curling into a defensive position. 

Suddenly all of the predatory victory, all of the power of this moment drops down along the line of your chitinous support structures and right out of your walkstubs, leaving you reeling. It is one thing to kill an opponent in combat. Eridan doubtlessly deserved it after culling two of your friends. The salt tang of Feferi’s blood lingers in the air and you can still taste the ozone from Sollux’s lasers in the back of your mouth. 

However, this tiny thing, hidden away inside of the folds of him like a most salacious and intimate secret did nothing to deserve your ire. 

You don’t know what to do. 

Seconds skitter by you, and your chainsaw reverts back to its compact version. The soft clicking noise you hear is the sounds of your claws rattling against the tube. 

Some seadwellers brood. If you had swung at a slightly different angle that small thing would have been neatly bisected right along with its host. That is the natural order of things: grubs and wigglers die. Really, if you are honest, more frequently than they probably should being that increasing the populace is necessary for expanding ever-outward into the stars. 

You should leave it there to die with Eridan. The sheer confusion of the grub’s presence overwhelms you and crowds all the other thoughts out of your pan. 

Where did it originate from? 

With all of the moaning and grumbling that Eridan had done to Feferi about not being quadranted, the presence of a grub inside of him certainly pointed to the opposite. 

Tapping your foot in a rapid tempo you settled into yet another painful, stupid decision. Those are your trademark so you don’t know why you bother to fight them. Behind you Karkat is still standing with his shout-cavern hanging open, washed out from the shock of seeing your corpse rise. 

Full of stupid ideas and surprises, the both of you.

Hooking your fingers, you press your claws through the membrane holding the grub. If it wants to be born it will come out. You leave the choice in its small, spongy claws. 

The grub’s head breaks through and you sigh. It, like the rest of you, would really like to live. You can’t fault it. It squeaks at you, in obvious distress. 

It’s different than what you studied in your feeds. Instead of the supple, velvety body this grub has exo-plating in addition to the beginnings of an interior set. A long tail hooks off the back end of it. Long slashes in its midsection heave in the air -- and you wonder if you are looking at the thing’s gills. That is another thing that you have never encountered in real life -- just in schoolfeeds. 

Karkat comes up next to you, staring down in nauseated fixation. “What. The fuck. Is that? It’s too early for pests to have gotten in him.” 

“That is a dying grub.” 

Karkat’s eyes get wider, his hands raise uselessly in the air as if he can shoosh the problem away. “Uh. Are we just going to let the brutal march of causality have its way with it?” 

“No. I am trying to think of what we should do. I am currently open to suggestions.” Your pan throbs and you scrunch one of your eyes closed, trying to forestall the inevitable tension panache that is coming for you. 

Karkat’s fingers curl in impotent distress. 

“You’re the grub expert out of the pair of us. If you want it to die faster I can try something and really that would probably be the most merciful thing to do for it, being that we are in a disaster of a session in some sort of metaphysical longform torture masquerading as a ‘game’.” 

At your feet, the grub twists, making terrible choking sounds. It’s legs flex ineffectually in the air. Karkat can’t stand the sight of it and reaches down with a disturbed expression to pluck the tiny thing free from the body. Before either of you can fall further into the grip of paralysis, a tank appearifies on a shelf with a note attached. Water sloshes around it wildly and some drips over the side. Bubbles float up from a submerged piece of tubing and a small piece of machinery purrs and grinds against the wall. The vague question of whether or not that particular piece of tech will continue life much longer flits across your mind to be dismissed. 

‘you are welcome - TG’ 

The script auto-translates in the back of your mind and you don’t question it. Stepping forward briskly, you hustle Karkat toward the tank. “Deposit the grub.” 

“What if this doesn’t work? What if we’re just drowning it? It went through all of the trouble of brooding like some sort of nightmare inside of the biggest shithead on this meteor and we’re just going to make its awful life just that much more pointless.” 

As Karkat is arguing with you, you guide his arms up and plunk the little thing into the water that is just settling from its jarring transport. It sinks to the bottom of the tank, half curled in on itself with sides fluttering weakly. Your chest tightens in subtle distress. 

The gifts sent from the void do not seem to be the answer to the tiny organic question in 

front of you. 

Moments pass, and then a few more. Karkat shuffles at your side, eyes wide as nutrition platters. “It’s... breathing I think. The gills are moving.” 

“That’s...good.” 

It is a truly felt statement even though the tone that you delivered it in might invite skepticism.It is good that there is a tiny scrap of hope in the maelstrom of confusion and disaster that the meager remainder of your species currently resides in. Neither of you think too hard about the fact that there is an arch-agent of the black queen coming ever-closer, or that the corpses of your friends will begin to smell after a while. After all, there are no convenient shrubs to plant them under to ensure that they do not once again rise. 

* 

Karkat always knows when she needs something. Many of his evenings are spent in front of the modified specimen-cube that is fitted into the wall. 

Your evening travels take you by him with the third book in a series that you attempted to read but ultimately passed on. Your tastes run more... exotic. Out of all of you, of course he is the one that has the majority of his collection of fictional accounts of things that may or may not have happened as described in his modus. Thus, your grub has stories to be orated in the nasal growl of your de facto leader. 

The empire is a vast place, and to remain ensconced tightly in the squares of a grid is more than your thinkpan can properly accommodate. It does not surprise you that the game came -- a tiny part of you knew with certainty that when the time came to descend into the caverns permanently you would not have been able to cross the final threshold and remain. 

The grub is hiding in a clump of decorative stones that the two of you laboriously alchemized. The demi fins around its body are starting to feather out and expand. Having no knowledge of what passes for pleasing aesthetics on seatrolls you cannot speak to the attractiveness of the grub to its peers. However, in your personal opinion, it is a lovely specimen of the species. 

“Either settle down and get your own novel out or move on. You’re in my light.” Karkat rumbles at you. 

“It is rather a pleasant wavelength.” 

The light is no such thing. Looking into it over long hurts your eyes. The two of you have not yet figured out a good work-around for the grub’s enclosure, but without the light source it gets so dark that you can’t find it properly. For the moment, the compromise is to have the light on during feeding times and then when the little thing starts to hide or look stressed, the light goes off. That in turn means that there has to be someone at hand to monitor the condition of the grub. Thus the two of you are here. Brushing your skirts to one side you settle at a comfortable distance, reaching into your modus for something to occupy your hands with.

* 

Dave is the first one that properly engages with the grub. He does so by sticking his hand in the tank and promptly getting bitten. His blood is a similar chromatic aberration to Karkat’s and swirls through the tank-water like ribbons in the current. The point of interest is stored away in the back of your mind for later review. 

Carefully pulling his hand up and drawing the grub up along with it, he stares between the captured limb and you. “It’s going to be a real disappointment if this causes a time loop. Is it gonna let go?” 

You put on your most conciliatory expression and gently squeeze the grub, attempting to get it to release it’s hold. 

“I do not wish to alarm you, Dave. But, the answer to your question is no. It is not going to let go. When grubs attach it is for micro-bites and slow digestion.” 

His skin shades several tones paler than its regular rusty brown. “Uh.” 

“For my notes, would you be willing to tell me if its saliva is causing an anesthetic reaction? Or does it hurt?” 

There is so much that you do not know about this grub that you have begun the reasonable process of filling a book with it. It used to hold some stray measurements and notes for sewing projects. The future of your species seems marginally more important. 

“I don’t know if it hurts because I’m terrified of being slowly digested by something the size of a baked potato or the shock is wearing off.” 

“I will assume that if there are any paralytic or pain-neutralizing effects to its secretions, that it has mixed success when applied to an alien target,” you say. 

Between yourself and Karkat you have found that while there is a paralytic effect to the grub’s bite there are no pain-dulling effects to be enjoyed. It is your hope that the bite-mark on your forearm will molt off when you hit your sub-adult molt, but you do not trust that it will. If somehow there are other trolls around you beyond the ones that played the game with you, it may result in awkward conversations on why a pitchmate so small managed to prevail against your obvious excellence. Sleeves will have to be added into consideration on further outfits. 

Tickling the base of the grub’s tail and giving it a gentle tug is what loosens its hold. The pseudo-threat of being uncurled and eaten is a larger threat than the reward of ingesting human flesh. Dave pulls free with a wince and a suspicious look under the rim of his tinted shade-planes. The grub slowly inches its way up your hand and out of the water. It has been making forays out into the air for short periods of time, leaving puddles in its wake and holes where its sharp little claws pierce to anchor it. 

Karkat comes up, holding a medical-wrap and a cloudy expression. “Were you trying to get slowly ingested?” His usually blaring voice has softened down into something both curious and mocking. 

Dave tilts his head at him, tossing horns that are not actually on his head. “Course. Everyone’s doing it. I did it, Kanaya did it. Why are you missing out on all of this vore Karkat?” 

Catching the thread of the joke, you lift your arm in solemn agreement. “Indeed. Why skip out on the slow process of enzymes and acids that inevitably will render us into the same kind of liquid state that every troll springs from?” 

“Because I’m a mistake that I don’t want to fade back sloughing back into the gene pool. In fact, I’m such a big mistake that it almost rivals the one that I made coming in to speak to the two of you.” Slapping the medical supplies into Dave’s arms, he makes his exit. Dave and you share a look. 

“So, you think we’re going to have to always have the aquarium setup handy for it?” He gestures at the tank vaguely, fiddling with the sanitary strips on his frond. You extrapolate a translation of ‘aquarium’ to mean ‘aqueous environmental cube habitat’ through your own brilliance and context. 

“I am unsure. I do not believe so. Eventually sea trolls grow large and exist in both marine as well as terrestrial environs.” Pursing your lips you think on that. “I’m very lucky that you saw fit to send that back in time. Otherwise they would have died.” 

Dave tilts his head slightly and nods. “And...now we have closed a loop. That actually _was_ a mystery that needed solving. The itch of inevitability was tingling just between my shoulders y’know? If you don’t catch that shit it gets all wild and crazy like first year college kids in a co-ed dorm.” 

All of that analogy is utterly lost on you. Dave goes on. 

“ Even with the cavalcade of shenanigans, you and I managed to pull the pieces together and crack this case. Go team.” 

Nodding to himself, he rocks back on his heels, peering at you from under the hood of his god-tier raiment. “You said that the tank appeared when you were pulling the grub out of wherever it is that you found it?” 

“Out of the place that it stowed away in, yes.” Paradox-time breaks your pan and you do not try and conceive of it beyond the understanding that it is there. 

“You were very thoughtful and left a note. Thank you, Dave.” 

Living on the meteor with them, you know their trollian handles now. It was Dave that provided your little problem with a place to thrive. 

There is no clear reason to hide the grub’s origin from the humans or the rest of your team. However, you are compelled to do it. It is a secret that needs keeping, and so you’ll keep it. The humans most likely will think the fact that certain members of your party can brood live young within themselves to be no more outlandish than the fact that you no longer count among the living and continue to go about your business. They have a rather skewed understanding of what normal is, you think. 

You told the same things to Vriska and the rest, that you did to Rose and Dave. The grub showed up in one of the containers in the labs -- perhaps a misfire of the genetic compiling systems or a stowaway. For reasons of his own, Karkat feels inclined to keep your silence. Vriska, predictably, did not care beyond initial concern for what irons might be heating. 

In the crook of your arm, the grub squeaks, looking for somewhere to bite that is not covered in fabric. 

*

 

“My question is this-” Rose Lalonde poses her query with her legs flipped scandalously across your lap. Waiting patiently for the actual question to arrive you brush your thumb along the join of her knee and try to ignore the thump of her pulse beneath your finger. 

“Does the grub count as a player?” 

That...certainly is a question. Carefully skirting around the actual truth of the matter, you answer based on the original lie. 

“I do not think that she would qualify as a player. She was present when the game began, therefore I assume her to be a game construct.” The more than you lie the smoother it comes out. You fix your gaze carefully on the viewing screen in front of the reclining platform. 

Rose Lalonde seems to have been hatched simply for the purpose of seeking out uncomfortable truth hidden in the spaces between words. The weight of her regard is a physical presence against the side of your face. You want her hands to light there instead. Or her lips. Any contact, really, is welcome. 

“Then she is a paradox child. The issue that I take with that... is that we are paradox-children as well. We do not begin, nor do we end. We are seamless.” Making a strange gesture with her fronds, she forms them into something resembling a sphere. “So I wonder why she has begun so entirely off-kilter from the rest of us. We belong in the flow of the game, pushing it forward toward its inevitable hatching and the destruction thereafter.” 

“You are speaking of paradox reacharounds. Yes. That is something that Sollux explained to me in-depth, much to my chagrin for asking the question that prompted the explanation.” You say. 

Rose is such a smooth and strange thing. No horns grace her head, her hair looks like lusus-fur and tiny, shimmering fields of it lay over every surface of her. When you touch her, she burns like a silken star, radiant and strange under the tips of your claws. More and more often you find yourself wanting to explore those different textures and see how they respond to your own. 

That could also be your mating urges. The timing of this game was ill-advised. 

“Does she have a name yet?” Rose asks. 

The both of you know that you dodged the question. She does you the courtesy of letting the conversational tangent slide away. 

You shake your head. “That is normally something that is extrapolated from the communication of one’s lusus.” 

Rose watches you out of the corner of her eye. “So who is it’s lusus?” 

Who indeed? The strange honor ought to belong to the grub’s incubator. The thought catches you and pulls all of your insides tight and painful. Eridan lays folded in two neat parts in one of the rectangular cooling units deep in the labs. Vriska mentioned something about prototyping. 

It is a meagre comfort to you that Eridan likely would not have been any better at this than you are. 

“I suppose that the grubs lusus is... the one most often in it’s company?” 

“So Karkat, then?” Rose considers that, her mouth tilted upward in a vague expression of bemusement. If it were a troll making that face, there would be a hint of fang to it. 

“Karkat. Or perhaps I would qualify for the position.” A tiny coil of possessiveness sits in the back of your pan and you try to shoo it from your thoughts. It is an aberrant one and needs to be corralled with the rest of your thoughts along the same track. 

“I didn’t think that trolls formed that kind of bond with their offspring.” Rose dropped her head to one of the throw-pillows lounging around the couch, releasing you from the terrible and wonderful power of her full attention. 

“There... sometimes is a precedent for...atypical grub management.” 

Flashes of old texts in the jade libraries prick at the edge of your memories. One of your lot had crossed the Disciple at some point. The quality of paper, the impressions of ink on the material had strongly indicated that you were holding an original copy of his teachings. 

Hemo-anonymity had a long and storied history in the caverns, and meeting Karkat had been reason enough to start looking into the archives. The fruits of your search brought you to the carefully hidden testament. The Sufferer had been accompanied by a rogue caste-mate who loved him in a way that had nothing to do with the grid that all of you slot yourselves into. The Dolorosa - a title made of a loanword from one of your conquered worlds. The meaning had something to do with birth, which was apt. The words in that text were obscene and profound. When you are with your grub you feel as if you have a hint of an understanding of what might have driven her to take such actions. 

“That is our default social model.” Rose said. “Two guardian adults and their attached clade caretake young until they are self-sufficient.”

As with a good amounts of things that Rose says, you find yourself skeptical. “That seems like a great deal of effort and energy for one small human that may or may not even thrive? How many arrive in a clutch?” 

Rose’s eyebrows arch with mischief. “One. On occasion there are two. In a small percentage of children there are multiple-births. They are more prone to failure or complication, however.” 

Humans don’t make sense. 

* 

The bipedal pupation comes at the worst possible time. Of course it would -- because your life never can be simple. At any time for any reason. 

Momentary panic rose over their absence at the top of their favorite rock, but quickly subsided when you saw the cocoon in the bottom half of the tank behind it. Having excellent foresight Nemone had been moved to a much larger tank in anticipation of their eventual change in form. It had been Karkat that settled on their eventual name, having misheard the name of Earth-naturae that vaguely resembled her fin-construction. 

Standing and watching the casing gently bobbing along with the current in the tank you fold your arms across your middle and wonder what it would have been like if Eridan had been here. It is an abstract thought, not born out of any great compassion for the individual. Instead you mourn for the knowledge and secrets that you would never have been privy to, things that will help this grub flourish. 

Perhaps, in a tiny way you do mourn for the friend that Karkat lost. For the fount of power and sheer idiocy that your team lost. It has been some time since you bisected him and things have happened. He was a stupid, arrogant, casist shithead; and he will never have the chance to show that he could be anything more than it. That is the only part of Eridan that you miss -- the boy that could have grown up to be better than his beginning. Certainly most of you are growing into the worst versions of yourselves. It is an effect of paradox space, and of stress. It contorts one into shapes that they can barely hold and then asks them to dance. 

Vriska leans against the other side of the tank, distorted through the water and glass. It’s a small comfort to have that barrier between you. She looks at her claws on her organic hand and then over her shoulder at you. 

“This is reeeeeeeeally boring. Is this what it’s like all the time in the caverns?” 

“I couldn’t say, being as I have never been in them,” you answer. 

“I don’t understand why you’re bothering to keep that thing? We’ve got so many irons in the fire and having a wiggler shambling around and shitting themselves is not going to make any of it any easier. There’s not even a lusus around for it.” 

The concerns she brings up are not any that have gone unattended. 

“True. But we have a highly functioning ectobiology lab. Unlike yourself and Karkat I have put some of my time toward the study of its function.” 

There have been several attempts which you find promising. The ‘sea pancake’ that Dave had so blissfully looked at while pressed up against its tube was the frontrunner, followed by a couple of other aquatic Alternian naturae. Once they had a viable sample it would simply be a matter of introducing the wiggler to its additional guardian. While they dealt with the Jacks and the rest of the insanity upcoming, the lusus could watch the wiggler. 

Watching her through the glass, you narrow your eyes at her back. “Do not assume that I would leave my charge unattended. Even in the midst of temporal and reality-breaking absurdities.” 

Unlike the rest of them, you have had an understanding of your duties even prior to the game. While you would have carried them out in a fashion of your preference, rather than abiding by the edicts of your culture, you would have done them well. Vriska’s snort cuts through a layer of your confidence, but not nearly as deep as it used to. 

“That’s all fine and whatever. However! There are Jacks to take care of. There is Lord English. Just saying, that whatever it is that you think you are ready for there is no way that you actually are. We’ve got to get ourselves together and ready!” She turns, tapping her claws against the glass.Glaring at her through the panes, you shake your head. 

“That is all well and fine. Don’t tap on the glass.” 

Vriska gives you a withering glance and shakes his head. “I don’t know why I bother trying to talk to you about anything. Fussyfangs.” 

The easiest way to get Vriska to go away is to disengage, you learned this sweeps ago but it took time for the lesson to stick. Pressing your lips together, you wait; and true to your prediction she flips her hair and stomps off. 

Pressing your palms flat against the cool of the tank, you sigh. Vriska has one thing right. None of you are ready. 

* 

She looks like Ampora. There is a distinct stair-step to her horns that tapers out to a sharp point. The angle is different enough to be unique to her, but echoes of him sing in her form. 

Staring back at her and making a deep noise in your thoracic cage the singular thought marches across your mind. You should put her in the tank with the ray-lusus, but you are transfixed by her tiny, dark eyes and the moon-planes of her tiny pale face. Everything about her is washed out soft angles. The two of you are singing a bonding song to one-another. Nemone harmonizes with your buzz as if she had hatched carrying the harmony of it. 

Pupation, you read in the old texts in the caverns, is where a troll truly becomes awake as a soldier. In this moment you understand why. There is a tiny troll watching you back, aware and resplendent in her tank. Resting her fat arms on the side of the container she leans up and you come down to her as if lured by something that cannot be heard. 

Nemone chooses then to hack up a lukewarm mixture of water and stomach acid directly into your face. Yes. This is the _miracle of life_. In the back of your pan, Rose croons the phrase, wiggling her eyebrows at you in a way you have come to understand as playfully. Wincing and scrubbing the stinging gunk from your view globes some of the delight seeps out of you and reality arrives in its wake. 

Offering your hands to her, she chooses to mash her face into your palms, chirring happily. Chuckling in confused delight you give her face a tiny rub with your thumbs, warring with the internal confusion and perversion of offering such an intimacy to a stranger. 

She is not a stranger, though. This is the group’s grub, and your tiniest party-member. Hoisting her up and into your arms she dangles a bit awkwardly until you find a comfortable position for you both. She clings to your shoulder and stares around, flaring her fins and flexing her claws slowly. Foresight had you in one of your old gardening shirts. Even if salt-water seeps through it there is nothing important to be ruined. The two of you make a slow parade of the lab that her tank is housed in, and then continue on to the ray-lusus’ enclosure. 

Turning, you speak to your new arrival. 

“This will be your lusus Nemone. She will watch you while we attend to non-delightful terrestrial matters.” 

The wall holding in the lusus comes to your chest. The space was designed to be wide and shallow enough to let the wiggler have both land and water to rest in. The deeper parts of the pool are easily double your height and stretch down to the level below in one continuous clear wall. It has been a pastime of the group to sit and read or play handheld games while the ray and a few smaller copies of the same slowly glide through the water like ghosts. You’ll be able to see Nemone as well, as she swims. 

This is, of course, assuming that you all don’t die. There is that. 

Nemone bites into the meat of your shoulder through the fabric, growling and gurgling softly. 

“Ow,” you monotone. Before she can freeze your arm in its joint you deposit her into the enclosure with a soft ‘bloop’. Her hair fans out around her in a corona of black and there is a brief coughing fit while she adjusts to water again. The expression that you get for it is as surly as you might expect. 

“So sorry, but you were gnawing on me.” Chirring at her, you lean against the glass. “Do feel free to explore. Tell me what you think.” 

Doing exactly the opposite, she rests beneath the water. Stretched out on the bottom of the tank she gazes up at you until the ray-lusus comes to her. Then there is...a pause. They regard one-another, until the large form of the ray slides down to cover her. It gently bops around her and the two of them begin the slow process of bonding. It’s other, smaller fellows shimmer and flicker around them and you push down the curious sense of jealousy that you feel. 

This is better for her.


End file.
